


Phase

by Nedrika



Category: Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Cunnilingus, F/M, Ghost Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Yuleporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:50:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21837757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nedrika/pseuds/Nedrika
Summary: Dennis had spent all of his life wanting, and rejecting, the touch of another human, but death has a way of changing things.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Phase

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StopTalkingAtMe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/gifts).



> This is also a Matthew Lillard appreciation post in light of that new Scoob trailer

Being dead was more peaceful than he had expected. Sure, he'd seen enough of the other plane to have a pretty good idea how listless a lot of them got, and he'd been dreading the possibility of being stuck in one long endless seizure, but he'd made it through the tough bit when his spine had been snapped in half like a pencil. Now there was nothing but an aching deep in his bones.

The house was a strange haunting ground. A lot of the glass panes had been destroyed, but enough had been shaken free to lie across the ground in script that glowed when he walked over it, the spells buzzing through his feet, and the various trinkets and books lay scattered and singed all around.

Just below it all was the _ocularis infernum_ , which was not quite ready to be gone. Hell pulled at him from beneath the rubble and the cracked hallways, the hole in reality creaking and tugging at the substance of the place. It yawned, jaws slowly creaking shut in soft, almost imperceptible clicks and chatters below him until it would be intact again, mere broken clockwork. 

It wouldn't be right to leave before it was shut. Kalina had gone as soon as the dust had settled, complaining bitterly about there being nothing left for her there. The suit had taken a little longer to manifest, grumbling about the money he was owed and making a weak effort to pull himself through the spelled glass. Dennis had laughed at him, flopping about with half a body, before he'd cursed about it being useless and disappeared. He'd tried to be curious about where he could have gone, but everything that wasn't mopping up Cyrus' mess was difficult to give a shit about. 

Time passed, although how much he wasn't sure; the eye had crept almost closed when Kathy turned back up.

She was the first person he'd seen for... however long. He knew her immediately, but then it was pretty difficult any of the family that had gotten him bounced around a magic house like a ping pong ball. She looked much the same, so it can't have been too long, and was picking her way carefully through the labyrinth of debris with a pair of illuminated glasses firmly on her nose. He tried to stand straight but his kinked spine wouldn't let him; he settled for leaning against a torn off support pillar and called over to her in his most alive tone of voice.

She jumped and whirled to him, and didn't think before she slid the glasses off with a broad smile of recognition. For a second she was confused, and he tried to not let it burn when her face fell.

"You don't need to worry about the others, they're all long gone. Your mom too," he said quickly, and cursed himself. The last thing she needed was him bringing up her mom after all he'd done, but she only nodded.

"Why are you still here, then? Shouldn't you be at peace or something?"

He laughed spitefully.

"I am, uh, not that. But someone has to make sure that piece of shit Cyrus doesn't crawl his way out of hell, right?"

She cringed away, pulling arms around herself. A fair reaction; it wouldn't be a pretty sight even if he did make it out.

"Are you relic hunting for your uncle's fortune, then? I've got a lead on a briefcase full of cash if you are."

"No, at least not yet," she said. "Dad's up to his eyeballs in Cyrus's accounts, since he's still dead as far as the rest of the world knows. Seems like that lawyer guy knew what he was talking about." She paused and looked down. "Is there anyone that you'd want to get what my dad promised you? For going down into the basement."

"No, you can keep it."

Neither of them said anything for a while as his mood soured, Kathy rubbing at her arms.

"It still doesn't feel real. I'd spent so long thinking I knew what was going on in the world, but I didn't know anything."

"Yeah, well, it's better not to. You've no idea how fucked up it gets."

"I can't just forget it all, can I? That ghosts are real and controllable, that the Devil is designing houses fueled by my mother?! Here I am talking to you and you're..." She paused, the anger fading into an interest he hated to recognize. "Can I touch you?"

"No," he snapped, and his body flickered a few steps back.

She was upset for only a moment, then looked around to take in the ruins of the house. 

"There's so much knowledge about ghosts here, under the rubble and if I could get it out and understand-"

"No," he repeated more firmly. "Don't think like that; you've seen what it does to get too into this stuff. Even as _sincerely_ messed in the head as Cyrus was he didn't torture them for kicks like some, or test spells out on people. And this is a man who wanted to manufacture the ghost he wanted. Can you try and understand why getting curious about this could be the worst decision of your potentially very short life?"

Kathy was staring at him, shocked, then drew herself up. 

"You said that there were rules, right? Can you teach me, keep me on the right track?"

"Absolutely not." He could hear the emotion cast inhuman ripples through his voice, but he couldn't calm down enough to care about sounding alive. "It's a lot of reading about, seeing and then harnessing the misery of other people, and I am firmly out of that business. As you can see, I have other matters to attend to." 

He gestured to the smear of blood that ran down his face and would not be removed. 

"But if my mom could be set free maybe the others could be saved too, I could help them!"

"They're still people, you can't stuff them in those boxes and experiment on them like that, especially when there's a zero percent chance of success."

Kathy recoiled, her fists squeezing tight.

"You've no room to talk when you're the one who caught them in the first place."

The truth crawled over his skin and he tensed with a frustrated anger so hot it left his limbs loose. 

"And look where that got me! Consider it a sudden change in perspective letting me discover some empathy, okay? I didn't know it would be for something quite so apocalyptically bad, I didn't ask a whole load of questions, but it was supposed to get them out of places where they could hurt people! So what if I made some money at the same time?"

"But how could you have not known what he was doing? Or what sort of person he was?"

"Because he didn't treat me like a freak!" he shouted in overflowing fury. He was getting more unstable; his voice echoed in waves around him and his waving arms blurred at the edges as his emotions bubbled and spat.

"He was the first person to tell me I wasn't a danger or liability. Sure, he didn't tell me everything and he used me like everyone else, but he spoke to me like a person and not a problem. Can you begin to imagine what it's like to see all your mother's worst thoughts when she kisses you goodnight? To not walk down a busy street in case you bump into a stranger and see something you'd regret for the rest of your life? Or sit alone in a room, scared of seizing up and seeing visions of death as you feel your soul rot? Except you're a normal kid; you don't know about wraiths and you can't see anything, so you've never relaxed!"

He heard Kathy try and interrupt, but he wouldn't - or maybe couldn't - stop until he was done.

"Cyrus found me and explained the world, told me why I was freaking out all the time and there was a reason for it, and a use. He was the first person in my entire life who believed me; of course I fucking helped him! And when it felt wrong I came here to fix whatever mess I'd made. I think I've paid the price for my decisions, wouldn't you say?"

He'd been too blinded by his feelings to see he'd flickered again, and he found himself almost in her face. He watched her hand in his peripheral vision as it raised to him and he flinched away. 

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and he almost believed her. "Thanks for saving my dad. He told us what you did for him, and all of us. You didn't have to do that."

The rage bled from him and he came back together by degrees. 

"Don't bother, it was a foregone conclusion." He ducked his head and blustered on to stop her from prying. "I got to die doing something worthwhile, and I'm doing better dead. I'm all in one place rather than stuck between them now, so I don't get the downsides of being a live psychic."

"So you can touch people, right?"

She moved towards him and he wavered. He'd not seen someone alive since she and the others had dragged their way out of the estate, and the prospect drove a wild and deep-seated fear through his bones. It had been all he'd known forever; that touching someone meant living their pain and fear as his own. Going through that again boiled anxiety deep in him, but there was a sliver of hope he'd never felt before; he couldn't bring himself to close the distance nor step away.

"Between this house and my dad you've already seen the worst of what I have to offer," she breathed. 

She touched his cheek but it sank through without resistance, a twisting, stretching feeling in his guts as her hand glided through the middle of his head.

"What the fuck," she gasped, recoiling her hand to herself as if scalded. 

"Different rules for entities," he replied automatically. The strange currents still rippled through his body, and were as alien as the lack of any images forced on him. It wasn't a touch, but maybe...

He hesitated, then stretched out to rest his hand against her neck. Images came to him as before, but slow and vague impressions than soon faded away and left him with only the contact, and the steady beat of her heartbeat under his palm. 

"You're cold," she said, and a shiver pulsed through her to him. 

"You're not," he replied, but he couldn't feel her body heat either. It was like wearing gloves, all pressure but not the connection of warmth. It was cruel that he'd had to die to touch another human without freaking out about it, and a familiar spike of bitterness tore through him.

The ocularis clicked in the depths.

"Kiss me?" Kathy asked. He froze and flickered away from their contact. He'd last kissed someone in grade school and even then it had been a bad experience. Things were different now, but too different. Dead different, but she was still there, and she was asking. 

He'd imagined what it would be like in his loneliest moments, but this he could never have predicted this. She was pliant under him, lips soft but insistent against him and he sensed her life blazing, memories slipping through him in a whisper as he laid hands on her waist. She opened her mouth to him; without either taste or wetness there was only the push of her tongue on his own, the flow of her panted breath passing through his body, the insistent thump of her heartbeat too loud in his ears.

They parted and concern shadowed her face for a split second, before a deep pull dragged in his chest where her hand went for his lapel and met nothing.

"Fuck," she murmured as he pawed at his intact chest, still reeling.

He was brought back to himself as she pulled her hoodie over her head and followed it with her t-shirt, full breasts still marked by the afterimage of claw marks. He scrambled to keep up; his blazer fumbled off before he ground again to a halt, fingers clenched numbly on the top button of his shirt.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked, thumbs already tucked into the waistband of her jeans.

"I'm, uh, not exactly used to this." It was pathetic to admit that he'd been ruled by his hang-ups for so long, but it was the truth.

"I don't care," Kathy replied, sliding her jeans down and pulling them off along with her loosely tied sneakers. "I just need you in me."

"I don't know if you do, it's... not pretty."

She stood up straight and looked him dead in the eye.

"I want to see," she said, and she looked so fearless he couldn't help but be won over. He slipped his shirt from his shoulders, feeling exposed as Kathy spotted the ugly purple lump of his fractured arm. 

"Does it hurt?"

"Not really." 

His heart was in his throat. It was better to disgust right from the offset than to have her find out later, and he turned on his heel to show her his mangled and splintered back. He heard her choke on air behind him and tensed, bending to pick his clothes back up and have the farce over when that strange tugging at his spirit stuff stopped him. 

"Wait, Dennis."

She had her hand submerged halfway between the crater of the Hammer's strike and the creaking mess where the Juggernaut had broken him. He churned at the feeling of being passed through as her fingers floated over the bruises and divots, touching on the raw ends of broken bones and open wounds to trail sideways along his rib where the blood had run as he died, crumpled on the floor. The moment hung delicately between them in the silence of the ruins, and when he turned around her eyes were reddening.

"I'm sorry," she repeated as the first tear fell. He stepped in to kiss her again, harsher and more desperate in the pain and loss of finally being treated with human kindness, without pretense or purpose.

They parted and she settled herself down on one of the long panes of ensorcelled glass, webbed with cracks and lying at an angle against the rubble.

"You're sure?" he asked. It was so much so fast, but he didn't want her to say no and stop. He wanted.

"I think we both need someone."

He wavered for the final time before stripping down and knelt down to her, the spell weakened from the damage but still zinging up his thighs. His fingers trembled to pull the panties down her legs as she unclasped her bra, and she shuddered in return when he ran his cool hands over the plane of her stomach to reach up to her breasts.

Another quick kiss to her lips and he trailed down her body to push apart her thighs, relishing sharp inhalation above him when he gave a long lick along her slit. She shivered about him, palms squeaking against the pane as he tried again, pushing his tongue deeper into her and feeling the faint graze of short-shaved hair against his chin before he moved up to suck on her clit, a moan reassuring his trembling limbs.

It wasn't the nervous beating of his dormant heart but a wavering in his essence, the anxiety the same intense and bone deep inhibitor that it had been before even if there were new circumstances. This should have been impossible, there were so many ways that this altered body could hurt her, and he would never have this chance again. 

He sucked against her plush folds, one hand sneaking around to slide into her cunt. She arched her back, and then his whole world slid sideways as her palm swept right through his head. He pulled away as vertigo warped his vision.

"Ah, could you not do that?" 

She looked down the length of her body at him. She was beautiful.

"Sure, sorry, keep going," she said, her voice thick, and her head lolled back.

He couldn't taste her, but the texture was slick and soft and he could feel the muscles of her leg tense and shiver his hand moved slowly in her, the pressure of the life within her rising with her moans as he pushed and pulled, licked and sucked, and he could feel his cock swelling beneath him. 

His rush manifested as a flickering, fingers disappearing in and out of her slit in an instant, and she cried out, hands flying to grip into her legs.

"Shit, that's new" she exclaimed, curling up to look at him and his body stuttered to close the distance; she opened her mouth in surprise that he took advantage of to slip his tongue deep, the only sound the quiet hum of the spell fragment under his hand.

She panted as he pulled away, face bright and flushed.

"Do you want me to return the favour?"

"Even if I wanted you to, and I do, that's probably impossible." 

It hurt to admit. She raised her hands to his shoulders for a moment before reconsidering and they fell gently to her breasts as she spread her legs wider in invitation.

He gulped and took himself in hand, stroking himself leisurely as he took in the sight of her opened up for him. He lined himself up with her slit, nerves buzzing as loud as the spell tickling his knees, and as he pushed in her sweet smile widened into a shocked gasp.

"Fuck, cold!" 

Her hands scrabbled beside her as he drew out and then thrust back into her, the sound of skin ringing out when he sank deep. She was tight against his spirit-flesh, pulsing with life and more perfect than he could have imagined. He moved faster, drawn in by the feel and the sound and the aura that glowed just under skin that prickled and hair that rose from the ice of his touch.

She lifted her knees, eyes closed and jaw loose, and crossed her knees behind his back as if to wrap around his waist; when he pulled back the pressure at his soul made him falter.

"Let me feel it."

Disquiet lurched deep in his abdomen, but he drew himself out far enough so that the shreds of him brushed her legs, and focused on touching her. Her cunt tightened as her heels slipped across broken bone to dig into bloody wounds; he thrust his hips forward to catch it before pulling back to creaking vertebrae and slick liquid blood with as much of his undead strength as he could risk. She keened, one hand bracing and the other grasping roughly at her breast and he ducked his head to her other side in long suckles and licks as his hips picked up a fast, shallow rhythm. 

She tensed all over in, and when he lifted his gaze from her heaving skin he met shocked eyes staring directly through him, no longer lit by the spelled glasses.

It was a perverse image, that she was being fucked by an unseen, ice cold cock; it twisted deliciously in him and fueled the pleasure rising in him so that he flickered again, the rhythm of his thrusts lost in the oscillation so fast he couldn't tell any more whether he was buried balls deep or it was only barely against her, the pressure on his cock feather-light.

She had the glasses back on now, eyes sad even as the orgasm began to overtake her, walls tightening in rapid bursts around his shaft and he was right behind her, the crescendo slamming into him as he frayed at the edges, punch-drunk. 

He slumped against her, his still chest against her straining one and her sated sighs wafting through his neck. The spells buzzed and glowed along his side as he came back to himself; he was relaxed rather than tired, but then he hadn't slept for a long time. Kathy was fading fast, turning over with a lazy smile. She reached to put her hand on his arm, but it slid through to hit the glass below him.

Below them the heavy clockwork of the house closed the eye one more notch, a wound slowly healing itself.

One way or the other, by the time she came back to the house he'd be gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yule!
> 
> Dennis wears red silk boxers and you can't take that away from me.


End file.
